The culture of democracy under threat?
Populism, polarization and illiberal tendencies in today’s democracies
Keywords:
democratic culture, polarization, populism, inequalityAbstract
From the very beginning researching political culture has not been a value-free endeavour: in their seminal study Almond and Verba proposed three ideal types of political cultures of which the one they called participant corresponded the best to the practice and institutions of liberal democracy (Almond and Verba 1963). This paper argues that current trends of democratic backsliding makes the normative endeavour especially timely. Recently the quality of democracy has been declining even in well-established democracies and several countries, including EU-members Hungary and Poland, have experienced serious illiberal regressions. Moreover, the paper stresses the challenges stemming from the spread of populism and its consequences, like political polarization and the erosion of democratic norms. However, it also argues that populism is more than simply a threat to liberal democracy: it is also a warning sign of some deep, structural problems of today’s socio-political systems and, as such, will presumably not go away until those problems, like growing inequalities in income and influence, persist. From this perspective the paradox of populism lies in that it is a reaction to the disintegration of the polity while it is also contributing to its further fragmentation, which is one of the greatest challenges of today’s politics.
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